Fox's biggest hit, and cable's longest-running animated series "The Simpsons" has been on the air for 24 years but has never once aired reruns on cable. That's all about to change as FX's new sister network FXX has just purchased the syndication rights to the series.
News came out earlier in September that the Simpsons was shopping its reruns around to other cable networks. According to a report from the New York Times confirms the news that FXX will be the first network to air "The Simpsons" in syndication other than local Fox affiliates, which have been airing reruns on and off since 1993. It's not exactly a surprising turn of events as 20th Century Fox already owns FXX. The new network now has the rights to the 530 episodes that make up the show's first 24 seasons. The episodes will start airing in August of 2014, giving people plenty of time to demand FXX from their cable provider.
FXX nabbed the rights to The Simpsons after an intense bidding war that included TBS, and Adult Swim. Although the terms of the deal were not made public, according to Splitsider comedy blog the price of each episode was estimated to be between $1 and $2 million with the overall value of the 500+ package estimated between $550 million and a little over a billion in what could be considered the biggest syndication deal in television history.
There's no word just yet as to whether or not the deal includes FXX's streaming/VOD plans. The Simpsons is currently in the middle of its 25th season and was recently renewed for a 26th. This means that the show will continue at least into 2015.
FXX is a relatively new network aimed at being the comedy affiliate of the popular FX network. It includes original series such as "The League" and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." It also was home to the talk show "Totally Bias" with W. Kamau Bell but news recently broke that low ratings have caused the network to cancel the show. It seems that it had trouble holding its viewer base on a channel that most of the country doesn't get. It was the lowest rated late-night talk show most weeks.
